Anyone who is interested in the design of full suspension bicycles needs to check out Hannes Fleischer’s new simulation tool for mountain bike kinematics. A free light version of the online software is available so you can try it out before you buy. It is fun to play around with simulations of the most popular suspension systems that are already set up on the website. Users can edit characteristics of both the bike geometry and the rider and then see the effects of those changes in real time. Best of all, the software gives users the flexibility to create and test completely new suspension designs. The program can currently be used online and completed designs can be exported to several different common file formats. This really is a cool simulator; nice work Hannes.

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I played around with this before buying my mountain bike. I found it hard to see an appreciable difference in wheel path, even for an aerospace engineer (aka rocket scientist). I ended up going with a single-pivot design (think Rush, or Superlight) because of simplicity. Not really regretting it two years later.